Dangerous Minds enters the Emporium @StaticMass

My good friend and wonderful editor Patrick from Static Mass Emporium invited me to write a piece on the film Dangerous Minds recently. He told me that there was a back to school theme going on with a piece being contributed on Dead Poet's Society and Apt Pupil and that a piece on the 1995 film Dangerous Minds would also be very welcome, especially coming from a teacher.

I hadn't seen the film since I saw it in the cinema back in '95 but as Patrick pointed me to a YouTube link to the whole film online for free, I thought I'd give it a go. My main memory of the film is of Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise, a song I still love and know all the words to until this day. In fact my wife and I sang the whole song as we rode through the night on a moped on a Greek Island once. How gangsta is that? OK maybe not...

Anyway re-watching the film, I liked it a lot. Watching from the perspective of a teacher was very interesting as I was constantly thinking about what Michelle Pfeiffer's character was doing and whether it would be realistic to try anything similar. It's a surprisingly convincing film and pretty emotional too.

Here's a link to my full review of Dangerous Minds at Static Mass Emporium and you can watch the film below for free if you're interested.

"Dangerous Minds (as well as being the film that gave us Coolio’s classic Gangsta’s Paradise) is the story of one woman’s wish to change the future of an entire class of young adults who’ve been disregarded by the system and left with little chance to turn their lives around. LouAnne, an ex-marine divorcee enters the high school classroom determined to help these students graduate but there’ll be many complications that get in the way of her educational quest..."



Seen it? What did you think?

Fox Culls and NHS Staff: Stuff I know little about

In my continuing quest to make a career out of writing, I am trying to write for anyone, anywhere, anytime and that includes writing barely informed opinion pieces over at Yahoo. My first piece for the Yahoo Contributor Network was actually quite well informed seeing as I'm a teacher and it was all about how we should encourage our students to speak better in the classroom. I showed it to some of my students who had a good laugh when I told them that the article might just be about some of the people in the class. Anyway the article got on the front page of Yahoo and then got over 130, 000 hits in one weekend which is nearly as much as this blog has had over its whole two year lifespan! Here's the link if you fancy a read:

Why there is ‘nowt’ wrong with teaching children to speak proper English

I then wrote another piece on the calls for a fox cull to help get rid of urban foxes from towns and cities. This was a response to all the media coverage of the attack on the baby when a fox got in a house and nearly dragged a child away, thinking it was fair game to eat. Now I'm no expert on this subject but I gave it my best shot writing something about it as I do feel strongly that foxes should not be slaughtered just because one baby was attacked. Anyway here is the piece:

Foxes threatened by pitch fork carrying city folk in calls for cull

Then today I just found out my other fairly ill informed piece on NHS staff and whether services should be offered seven days a week got published. My Mum has been a nurse virtually her whole life so I felt quite strongly that NHS staff deserve to be treated better (just like teachers too I might add) but I also think the seven day service thing is a good idea. So that is what I wrote about. The last piece on foxes didn't make it to the front page so the stats on that were a lot lower than my first article but it will be interesting to see how this article on the NHS does over the next few days. I would appreciate it a hell of a lot if you would share it, tweet it and spread the word about it in any way you can! Here's the link:

Why the NHS should provide seven days of service, but also care for their staff better

If you want to follow my writing at the Yahoo Contributor Network, then please head over to my profile page and become a 'fan'.

Teaching Children Good Communication

This has nothing to do with films but I just joined the Yahoo Contributor Network and have had my first article pulished on it today. The article is about teaching children to speak properly in class rooms and not allowing them to use their street slang speak at inappropriate times.

The Yahoo Contributor Network looks like a really fun thing to get involved with and looks like it might actually pay for articles being published. I only just joined and they sent out a call for articles based around the idea of children in schools needing to be taught the correct ways of speaking so they would have better employment prospects in the future.

As I'm a teacher and I always have to put up with kids strolling into my class and saying 'WhaGwan?' and saying 'safe' to me instead of thanks, I get a little frustrated with it. It's not like we're living in an Attack the Block kind of hood where the kids walk in 'tooled up' so I don't know where they get the idea that this language is acceptable in the classroom. I don't even know where they hear this language unless it's just films and TV?

Anyway I wrioe this article and I hope it doesn't make me sound like a total snob but I just want kids to be able to know the difference between when they can and should use slang and when they need to speak a bit more formally.

Click on the title of the article below to be magically transported there:

Why there is ‘nowt’ wrong with teaching children to speak proper English

I do hope you enjoy it and don't think I sound like a total snob. Your comments are always welcome either here or there or anywhere you like. I'd loved to hear your opinion on the matter!